News & Announcements

AI4DOC, a spin-off company of the National Centre for Scientific Research "Demokritos", attended the Centre’s 65th-anniversary celebrations, which took place at the Athens Concert Hall (Megaron) on 29 September 2026. 

🔬 The wonderful event, entitled "Demokritos: Future Forward - Science for a Better World", was attended by government representatives, including the Minister for Development, Panagiotis Theodorikakos, the Deputy Minister for Development, Stavros Kalafatis, the Minister for Culture, Lina Mendoni, and the Minister of Digital Governance and AI, Dimitris Papastergiou. In addition, many distinguished researchers from Greece and abroad took part, such as the President of the CERN Council, Kostas Fountas, and the National Representative to the CERN Council, Christos Markou. Present throughout all the discussions were the Director of NCSR "Demokritos", Vangelis Karkaletsis, and directors and researchers from the six institutes of NCSR "Demokritos", with the sessions moderated by journalist Korina Georgiou. 

🏆 Innovation and entrepreneurship featured prominently at the event, with many spin-off companies from the "Lefkippos" Attica Technology Park showcasing their work and activities, including AI4DOC. The event was attended by over 1,500 people, including staff from the NCSR "Demokritos" and visitors who honoured the Centre with their presence. 

🙏 AI4DOC would like to thank NCSR "Demokritos" and especially the Innovation office of the center, headed by Sofia Magia, for the invitation to the celebration and for the overall support given to the company since its foundation. 

Website: https://celebrate.demokritos.gr/en/

Aikaterini Christopoulou presented the paper "Mapping the Historical Ecology of the Cyclades: A Diachronic Natural Language Processing Analysis of Travel Narratives" at the 2nd NLP4ECOLOGY workshop which was co-located with LREC 2026: Language Resources and Evaluation Conference, at 11-16 May 2026 in Palma, Mallorca, Spain. 

Read the paper here: https://lrec.elra.info/lrec2026-ws-nlp4ecology-10

Vasilis Gatos and Aikaterini Christopoulou had the honour of taking part in a presentation and discussion entitled "The Second Life of Books: The Past in a New Narrative", in collaboration with "To Donti" Publishers and the non-profit organisation ‘Pivot’, as part of the 22nd Thessaloniki International Book Fair on 7 May 2026.

The panel discussed how books of a historical or collectable nature, like all printed forms of information (newspapers, magazines, printed documents), can now be given a new lease of life through the use of technology. Furthermore, the methodologies, advantages and disadvantages of making them more easily accessible to researchers and transforming their content into new publications and other cultural applications were discussed: podcasts, vidcasts, educational materials, small-scale exhibitions and digital archives. Finally, examples of such applications were presented and the needs of publishers, libraries, collections and cultural organisations were discussed.

Speakers: Andreas Tsiliras, cultural manager, publisher; Vasilis Gatos, Director of Research, Institute of Informatics & Telecommunications, NCSR "Demokritos"; Aikaterini Christopoulou, co-founder, Al4DOC. Moderator: Stella Tsiarvoula, Consultant in Cultural Management & Communication, PhD candidate, Department of Journalism & Mass Media, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Initiative website: https://vivlio2.gr/

Basilis Gatos and Aikaterini Christopoulou had the honour to be invited as speakers at the 3-Day Event on Translation, Language Technology, and Artificial Intelligence (Language_Tech Patras 2025) in Patras (14-16/11/2025), organised by RIMA NGO, Rhyme&Reason Language Services and University of Patras. 

Language_Tech Patras focuses on emerging trends in language services. The annual forum serves as a platform for meeting and networking among translators, subtitlers, linguists, publishers, and computer scientists. It discusses new developments shaped by AI and other technological advancements, contributing to the lifelong learning of participants, aiming to foster connections between academic institutions, industry bodies, and professionals.

Website: https://www.reason.gr/language_tech-patras-2025-en/